On February 24, 2017 Tamar Morchiladze, an associate at BGI Legal, participated in the 6th Annual Tbilisi Pre-Moot Arbitration Conference. Tamar moderated a debate in British Parliamentary Style, addressing the issue of admissibility of claims in international commercial arbitration.

The conference was organized by Arbitration Initiative Georgia, a non-profit organization established by the alumni of the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot and was sponsored by the USAID-Promotion Rule of Law in Georgia (PROLoG), implemented by the East-West Management Institute (EWMI) and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).

The Tbilisi Arbitration Conference was followed by the 6th Tbilisi Pre-Moot, which aims to prepare Georgian and foreign teams for international rounds of the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot held annually in Vienna, Austria. 6th Tbilisi Pre-Moot involved students from German, Dutch, Latvian, Turkish and Georgian Universities.

Notably, Tamar is a coach of the Free University of Tbilisi team, which was acclaimed as the winning team of the 6th Tbilisi Pre-Moot.

The event was attended by students, young practitioners and experts in international commercial law and arbitration, representatives of academia, as well as Government officials and civil society representatives.

We are happy to announce that our colleague, Otar Kakhidze has been elected as a member of the Parliament of Georgia, where he will continue serving the country in a leadership position. We wish Otar every success in his new endeavors.

We are also happy to announce that David Kakoishvili has taken over the criminal law desk within the firm.

BGI is delighted to announce that the firm's partner Sandro Bibilashvili has passed the New York State Bar exam and was admitted to the New York State Bar in August 2016.

Admission to the New York State Bar allows attorneys to practice law in the State of New York. Only a handful of Georgian attorneys have ever been admitted to the NY Bar. Sandro will be the second member of BGI team (the first being the firm's founding partner Lasha Gogiberidze) to be admitted to practice law in New York which puts the firm in the unique position on the Georgian legal market to have two dually qualified (Georgia and NY State) lawyers. 

“This will no doubt boost our international practice and reinforce BGI's leading position on the market,” says Bibilashvili.

BGI Legal has just won a landmark case on behalf of Coca-Cola Bottlers Georgia, the largest bottler and distributor of soft drinks in Georgia. The Supreme Court of Georgia granted BGI's application to refuse recognition and enforcement of a foreign arbitral award rendered by an ad hoc tribunal seated in London. 

The Supreme Court ruled that the arbitration award was not subject to recognition and enforcement under the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards on the grounds that the award contained decisions on matters beyond the scope of the submission to arbitration.

“The ruling of the Supreme Court of Georgia proves that the courts of Georgia are ready to apply international standards to recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards and follow best practices in this field”, says Sandro Bibilashvili who led BGI's team to this success. “We believe that this decision will serve as a guideline for practitioners and increase the level of certainty for parties seeking enforcement of arbitration awards”, noted Mr. Bibilashvili.